Live to Tell (50 page)

“Can you get him off me, you silly bugger,” Ben spluttered. “He weighs a ton. And keep your voice down for God’s sake. I want to prop him up here as if he’s still waiting for a friend.” Ben’s hand was encased in orange fur that was burnt and melting. He glanced quickly from side to side. “If I let his arms and upper body hang over the rail no-one will realise he’s dead. At least for a minute or two.”

“Oh,
scheisse
. I’ll fetch a chair. It will be easier. We are lucky no security seems around here. I wonder where they are.”

“Don’t knock it. If possible I want our friend to get away from Britain before the body is discovered.” Ben stooped to pick up Fenton’s gun from where it had landed on the floor. Then he thought better of it. The police need to find that, he thought. God, even if he’d missed his target, in this crowd he would have hit someone else, no doubt about it.

Job done and body balanced precariously against the balcony wall, the two men went down the back stairs to ground level, strolled across the concourse and casually left the airport. As they walked into the underground station Ben threw the remains of an oven glove into a bin. The bear shaped glove puppet would be travelling back home with him, to be disposed of later.

Two days later on the thirteenth of September, after the attack on The World Trade Centre in New York during which London’s Heathrow Airport was temporarily shut down, Ben’s unit totally regrouped. The eager young Turks in the branch all wanted the hastily reformed Al Qaida desk. The Damascus and Baghdad desks were extremely popular too. In their Trafalgar Square office, Ben’s beleaguered boss asked plaintively if anyone cared to be responsible for residual Northern Ireland issues. Ben jovially volunteered, making light of the job as if it were a trifle.

“Well it does fit in with the European Intelligence Unit,” he said. He knew that Spanish and German sleeper cells might well be involved in the New York atrocity and that he would have his hands full but was determined that he would find time for this as well.

I wonder if the Alitalia flight was able to leave okay before the airport closed down, he thought later. Stop it. You’ve too much work on to spend time thinking about women, especially one with a smart Italian doctor for a boyfriend.

Now, with Al Qaida bubbling away and on everybody’s lips, the Provisional wing of the IRA seems largely forgotten by the general public. But not by me, he thought. Oh no. Not by me!

THE END